Japan-United Kingdom Relations

On September 20, during the Japan-UK Foreign Ministers' Meeting on the occasion of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Mr. Fumio Kishida, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson MP, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the UK, confirmed that Japan and the UK would cooperate in providing assistance to enhance border control capabilities of an airport in Tunisia, as part of concrete Japan-UK collaboration in assistance for developing countries in the area of security and defense which was agreed at the Second Japan-UK Foreign and Defence Ministers' Meeting ("2+2") held in Tokyo in January 2016. Its overview is as follows.

1. This is a collaboration project for strengthening counter-terrorism capabilities of Tunisia, combining resources of Japan and the UK in a mutually complementary manner, in the way that Japan provides a monitoring camera system to the Tunis-Carthage International Airport, and that the UK conducts training to strengthen the capabilities of airport surveillance including how to use the equipment that Japan provides.
2. Japan adopted the “Project for Improvement of Equipment for Security Enhancement” as counter-terrorism grant aid for Tunisia in FY2014. Under the project, Japan provides assistance including introduction of a monitoring camera system at the Tunis-Carthage International Airport. The estimated scale of the project is 687 million yen, which will provide equipments including 131 fixed-outdoor monitoring cameras, 30 PTZ outdoor cameras and 8 monitors. The installation of the system is to be completed at the end of October, 2016.
3. Building on this, specialized instructors dispatched from the UK are to conduct training for the employees in charge of guarding the airport on (1) how to watch the monitors of the monitoring camera system, including the way to detect suspicious subjects, (2) limitation of the system and the necessity of human factors that complement it, and (3) notes of caution on the occasion of security inspection.
4. This Japan-UK assistance is expected to enhance the safety of aircraft operations at the Tunis-Carthage International Airport as a result of strengthening the surveillance and safety management system around the airport, thereby promoting Tunisia's counter-terrorism measures and its social stability.